The Untidy Bride

Louise E. Allin, a poet and short-story writer, is also an English instructor at Cambrian College.

In this very small volume, Nicholls examines the multifaceted
relationships of the family and the complexities of sexuality itself as
her major themes. Her poetry is always competent, but often leaves the
reader unsatisfied, waiting for a biting simile, pungent metaphor, or
other memorable poetic device to highlight the experiences. It is as if
the five senses needed to be more actively involved, to see colors, for
example, to reach the third dimension. In one of her more successful
poems, “Bellevue Gardens, Kingston,” she paints more graphic
pictures: “Underground, plans are unfolding / you can hear the black
soil sketching / marrow, marigolds, poppies.” “Modern Woman” finds
her bloated heroine “wedged tight into [her] chair / hair a sticky
mess . . . fat fingers smudged in marmalade.” Without imagination like
this, these leaps that puzzle and clarify at the same time, the result
is a prosaic narrative with all the usual expectations—sleep as death;
an affair, as in “Married Man,” where the lover speaks as falsely as
he lives (“Being with you that month, he says, / was a denial of who I
am, of everyone / who is near and dear, of all that I love . . . the sex
was great, of course”).